Loyd Blankenship, better known by his pseudonym The Mentor, is an American computer

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exp ...

and writer. He has been active since the 1970s, when he was a member of the

hacker group Hacker groups are informal communities that began to flourish in the early 1980s, with the advent of the home computer. Overview Prior to that time, the term ''hacker'' was simply a referral to any Hacker (hobbyist), computer hobbyist. The hacker ...

s Extasyy Elite and

Legion of Doom The Legion of Doom is a group of supervillains who originated in '' Challenge of the Superfriends'', an animated series from Hanna-Barbera based on DC Comics' Justice League. The Legion of Doom has since been incorporated into the main DC Univers ...

Writings

Hacker Manifesto

He is the author of '' The Conscience of a Hacker'' (also known as ''The Hacker Manifesto''); the essay was written after he was arrested and was published in the

ezine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to an online only magazine was the computer ...

Phrack ''Phrack'' is an e-zine written by and for Hacker (computer security), hackers, first published November 17, 1985. It had a wide circulation which included both hackers and computer security professionals. Originally covering subjects related to ...

''. Since the essay's publication in 1986, it has been the subject of numerous panels and T-shirts.

Role-playing games

Blankenship was hired by

Steve Jackson Games Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and (until 2019) the gaming magazine ''Pyramid''. History Founded in 1980, six years after the cr ...

in 1989. He authored the

cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a combination of "low-life and high tech". It features futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberwa ...

role-playing Role-playing or roleplaying is the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role. While the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' offers a definition of role-playing ...

sourcebook ''

GURPS Cyberpunk ''GURPS Cyberpunk'' is a genre toolkit for cyberpunk-themed role-playing games set in a near-future dystopia, such as that envisioned by William Gibson in his influential novel ''Neuromancer''. It was published in 1990 after a significant dela ...

'', the manuscript of which was seized in a 1990 raid of Steve Jackson Games headquarters by the U.S. Secret Service. The raid resulted in the subsequent legal case '' Steve Jackson Games, Inc. v. United States Secret Service''.

References

External links

* ElfQrin.co
Interview with The Mentor (July 31, 2000)
*

published in ''Phrack'' Volume 1 Issue 7 GURPS writers American hackers Legion of Doom (hacker group) Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-compu-bio-stub